This installment of Finding Your Writer hits close to home for me. Dennis is an author of light, fizzing, and youthful novels concerning time travel and murder. Dennis is also my father.

His novels, boarding pastism surreal science fiction, are far less concerned, to my joy, in presenting a grand addition to human literature, as they are in indulging us with a revelation into the author himself. Reading him, the feel is unmistakable that Dennis writes in order to understand himself better, a long tradition of artists grappling with their craft. Dennis writes to find his voice, to wrestle out distinctions of a blurry past, and as a means to self discovery. Biased or not, I love him for that; I believe in him for that.

The day he announced to our family he was publishing a novel, we had questions. Could he write? Did he always have an interest in literature? I remember his joy of journaling long ago, but here it was, a stack of fresh and glossy novels laid open in brown boxes at the foot of his stairs. It felt like Christmas. I reach in to grab one. It was this exact moment, in my confusion and wonder, that I felt I knew the very least about my father, that I had a world yet to know, and the day my copy arrived in the mail I began by reading though the inscription into chapter one, into a whole new insight of him, of me, of us.

Amongst other similarly cerebral novels he has written, for his work in Steampunk Alice, Dennis’s take on Alice in Wonderland, a naive young Alice is whisked away to a mechanical, leather strapped, 1900’s industrial revolution styled, Steam Punk alternate universe, and must find her way back home. Campy, fun, thrilling and brilliant. What else can I say?

Now, will Dennis write the next great American novella? Not in the next few years I suspect, but this was never the point for him, for me, and for my family.

Dennis writes novels of exploration into the human condition simply by writing himself, his fears, his joys and interests into each book. And so I have gotten to know him, that is, the universe expanding in his head, his heart, more than I ever have been able, as neither kid nor adult, and that is the true point.

My father writes.

Writing to find ones self.

Because perhaps, in an unfinished world, creation is far less about the art we sculpt, and more about the men we become at the kiln.

“The last time I came here, I was happy—you wouldn’t believe it. Going back was…” I looked away from his knowing gaze and snorted bitterly as I recalled leaving the only place I considered home. “I felt really—everything was just really different and…wrong,” I finished meekly.

I thought he stopped listening after my snort which was why, when I looked back, I was startled to see him still focused on me so intently. For three breathes, he said nothing—just watched me the way you’d watch someone after they describe to you every wax and wane of the calla lily they keep locked away in their heart, every curve of its single petal, every kind of bow to its bending stem.

“I see it in you,” he said and before I could ask him what it is he saw, he was already telling me. “The sadness, I see it in your eyes. The struggle to—“

“—happiness takes work,“ I interrupted defensively, trying to justify what he saw.

“—I know it does. But, you know, happiness isn’t about the place you’re in.” He tapped my temple gently with his index and middle fingers before saying, “It’s in here.”

And when you look backOn everything in your lifeWill you remember When I was a child That I trusted you?Will you remember That I loved you?Will you finally admitThat you made a grave mistake?Will you feel remorse?Or will you deny The things you have doneWith your dying breath?

I sat down to write a scandal because I'd grown altogether tired of just living one.

At first, I admit some trepidation. I mean, there are limits to self-indulgence, and fiction is a step beyond my usual line. Wine in the early afternoon, dancing in the early morning, breakfast at any sinful time of day... these, I can do. But to set my meager set of words to page?

Vanity has its limits. Then again, limits are for the limited. I can fake my life to the contrary.

Oh, the best-seller I could write! Not because of any particular talents at prose nor any death-defying feats I've managed, unless you consider brunches defy death. (And why wouldn't you?) No, I simply believe that I have a market aged to tap for a little nest egg to fund my silver years.

Oh, yes. I'm going to put down words that may speak the faintest truths about my life - over-dramatized and with a cheater's sort of polish - but that's not the big trick. No, no, no. The big trick is that I'm going to make my largely-imaginary narrative into a mirror. Into yours, in fact.